At this toxic time in our cultural history when an alarming number of people — particularly those on the right side of the political spectrum — are eager to declare empathy to be a weakness, it’s gratifying to find a major filmmaker presenting a forceful counterargument in the form of a popcorn-friendly blockbuster. Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day earns a lot of descriptors. It’s an alien invasion movie and a big swing of a thriller. It’s a sci-fi adventure that concentrates on the small details of what it means to be human. Admirable as these attributes are, the film is also occasionally confused about its own theses. It regular trips up as it dances between crowd-pleasing aspirations and its weightier thoughts.

Disclosure Day has two protagonists: Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) and Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt). Daniel is a computer whiz who bounced from a prison stint for cybercrimes to a lucrative job at an imposing company with shady government ties. After discovering his employer is part of a decades-long cover-up of alien visitors, he’s recruited by a resistance group intent of bringing all the secrets out into the open. As the film opens, Daniel is on the run from malevolent forces. Meanwhile, Margaret is a television meteorologist at a Kansas City station. One morning, she begins unwittingly speaking Russian, an odd incident that turns out to be merely the opening salvo in her displaying of myriad of supernatural abilities. An on-air moment that showcases her newfound facility for an unearthly language of clicks and gurgles puts her on the radar of both warring sides.

The plot carries this pair through escalating danger and narrow escapes, often guided at a distance by the soothing, relentless strategic Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo). Spielberg conceived the story, and he and screenwriter David Koepp do their best to slow play the film’s revelations, less because there are shocking twists and more as a technique to layer in tension. Although there are plentiful scenes that grapple with bigger philosophical and theological questions, the pulse of the movie only quickens when the rollercoaster is in motion. I’ve no doubt that Spielberg is sincere in his desire to explore the value of mutual understanding among humanity through a story reliant on extraterrestrials, but he chose the wrong regular scripting collaborator to help him do it. Koepp’s scenes of intellectual debate are leaden bores, leaning on first-notion shortcuts. In truth, too much of the action narrative suffers from a similar problem as Koepp takes the laziest path to a needed turn of fate. As I watched Disclosure Day, I couldn’t help but wonder what Tony Kushner, screenwriter of four Spielberg films including the previous two, could have done with the same prompts and building blocks.

Edging towards his eightieth birthday, Spielberg is at the point of his storied filmmaking career where each new screen offering is invariably in conversation with his entire legacy. Disclosure Day certainly feels like a companion piece to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which, surfing in the wake of the massive success of Jaws, was arguably the first feature that allowed the director to put his truest, fullest artistic self on screen. Emphasizing that connection, there’s a cap tip to the earlier film’s iconic scene at a railway crossing stop. Beyond its unofficial status as a follow-up encounter, the film has a mildly valedictory air. The John Williams music somehow evokes every tingly, twinkly score he’s concocted for Spielberg over the decades, and Janusz Kamiński’s cinematography overindulges in trademark light flares on the lens. Claiming a summer date on the release calendar even feels like Spielberg knowingly closing a circle, or at least giving the impression of an arc made complete. Spielberg might not be done, but he creates Disclosure Day so it could serve as a final summation if needed. If it’s not quite as strong as I might hope, the film does a solid job of reminded that audience that Spielberg has been in conversation with them all along.